New York Post sued for libel over Boston Bombings coverage

The New York Post is facing the consequences for a controversial cover it ran three days after the Boston Marathon bombings.

Two young men—16-year-old Salaheddin Barhoum and 24-year-old Yassine Zaimi—are suing the News Corp.-owned paper and five of its journalists for libel after they were featured in a front-page photo that they say implied they were the bombing suspects.

Barhoum and Zaimi both had gone to watch the marathon on April 15 and had left the race two hours before the bombs went off. On April 18, after learning that a photo showing them near the bombing site had been circulating on the Internet, they both went to their local police departments to explain their presence at the race. The police released them and told them they weren’t suspects. But later that morning, the Post ran its story.

The front-page photo showed Barhoum and Zaimi, both wearing backpacks, standing in the crowd at the marathon. The headline read, “Bag Men: Feds seek this duo pictured at Boston Marathon.” The contentious cover ran just hours before the FBI released photos of the real suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev